Margaret strode into the house, calling out as she went. “Doe! Lion! Where are you?”

She didn’t find them till she opened the door down to the ground floor. Half soaked in floodwater, the slaves were as frightened and miserable a group as she had ever seen. “Come upstairs now,” she said. “Lion, your master needs help dressing himself. He’s very drunk, but I have the gun.” She showed him the pistol. Then, certain that Lion had no murder in his heart, she handed the gun to him. “I suggest you lose this and then don’t find it for a few days.” He carried the gun upstairs with him, only dropping it into his pocket at the last minute.

“You sure he don’t kill the master?” asked Doe.

“Doe, I know you’re a free woman, but can you go to Lady Ashworth? As a friend. No harm will come to you from it. She needs comforting. She needs you to tell her that the man who had the use of her was more than a trickster. He forced her against her will. If she doesn’t remember it that way, it just proves how powerful he is.”

Doe looked studious. “That a long message, ma’am,” she said.

“You remember the sense of it. Find your own words.”

King Arthur and his council had been meeting for an hour before Lord Ashworth finally bothered to show up, and it was obvious he had been drinking. It was rather shocking and would have been a scandal on any other night, but all the King could think about was that finally he was here, perhaps he could break the impasse over what to do. Hotheaded John Calhoun was all for hanging one out of every three slaves as an example. “Make them think twice before they plot again!” On the other hand, as several of the older men reminded him, one didn’t seize one-third of the city’s most valuable property and destroy it, just to make a point.

Lord Ashworth, however, did not seem interested in the argument. “I have someone to see you,” he said.

“An audience! At a time like this!”

“She claims to know about the conspiracy.”

“We know about it already,” said the King. “We have soldiers searching for the hideout right now. If they’re wise, they’ll drown themselves in the river before they let us take them.”

“Your Majesty, I beg you to hear her.”

The intensity of his tone, despite his drunkenness, was sobering. “All right, then,” said the King. “For my dear friend.”

Margaret was ushered in, and she introduced herself. Impatiently, the King got to the point at once. “We know all about the conspiracy. What can you possibly add to what we know?”

“What I know is that it wasn’t a conspiracy, it was an accident.”

She poured out the story, keeping it as close to the truth as possible without announcing just how powerful Calvin was before, and how helpless he had become. A young White man of her acquaintance noticed a man taking something from each slave that disembarked. It turned out that they were charms that held the slaves’ true names, along with their anger and their fear. Tonight there had been an accident that destroyed the name-strings, and the slaves suddenly found themselves filled with the long-hidden rage. “But the flood frightened it out of them, and you’ll have no rebellion now.”